Downsized Schools Pushed for Oakland

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, January 19, 2000

2000-01-19 04:00:00 PDT OAKLAND -- Small schools, dozens of them, were presented yesterday as the solution to Oakland's troubled public system.

With just two weeks remaining before state auditors release their yearlong investigation of what is wrong with the Oakland schools, interim Superintendent George Musgrove disclosed his solution to the district's woes.

Musgrove's draft policy proposes that Oakland follow the lead set by East Harlem, Boston and Chicago and decentralize itself over the next five years into small, self-run schools where parents and principals decide on curriculum, hiring and where to send their kids.

The long-range goal, Jubb said, is to add 50 to 60 small schools to the district in the next decade, so parents can choose to send their children to large, traditional schools or to small, alternative schools.

A public meeting on the idea is scheduled for February 15, and the school board is expected to vote on the small-school policy the week after.

The proposed Oakland reform is modeled after after East Harlem's famous District 4, which switched to locally run small schools in the 1970s and catapulted test scores from the worst in New York City to 15th place out of 32 districts.

A majority of Oakland's 54,000 students read below their grade level. Nearly every school's test scores lag behind state and national averages.

"Having a small-school environment, everyone knows everyone, parents feel welcome and important," Musgrove said. "With public school choice, parents can vote with their feet and feel more connected to their child's school."

The Oakland district has 90 schools, and parents and teachers are increasingly fed up with overcrowding in the less affluent neighborhood schools. Elementary schools in the wealthier Oakland hills have a maximum enrollment of 400 students, while elementaries in the Fruitvale and East Oakland communities have 900 to 1,500 students each.

Overcrowding is so severe that some schools have switched to multitrack, year-round schedules that force teachers and their students to pack up and relocate their classes to different rooms each month. Students study on stages, in storage rooms and in hallways.

Oakland's six high schools average 2,000 students each.

The proposed small-school policy would limit Oakland elementary schools to 300 students and high schools to 400 students. It also calls for a new teacher education center that would help the small schools to develop school calendars and curriculum and to recruit teachers. Schools would control their own budget and assess their own programs.

The report does not describe how to finance the new schools, but the school board has voted to set aside $44 million for six small schools if voters approve a $303 million school bond on the March 7 ballot.

The district hopes to use bond revenues for the first small school at the abandoned Woodland Elementary School site in East Oakland. The plan for Woodland is to reopen K-3 classes in portables this fall and to build a new school on the site by 2003 that would include grades 4 and 5.

The shift toward smallness is backed by Oakland Community Organizations, which represents 35,000 Oakland families. Last September, the group secured public commitments from Musgrove, Mayor Jerry Brown, Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and school board members Noel Gallo and Dan Siegel to bring smaller schools to Oakland.

"We are finally all on the same page. Now, we just need to go with it," said Ken Chambers, co-chairman of Oakland Community Organizations.

Oakland High School social studies teacher Don Tyler welcomed small schools for elementary school children, but warned that thematic, small high schools might benefit the few and not the whole.

"There's something to be said about homogenous grouping that helps kids learn to socialize in a democracy," he said. "If you only let the math wizards associate with math wizards, I'm not sure that's helping students in the long run."